


what to do when the girl you like stabs you with your own penknife

by novoaa1



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, POV Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Past Abuse, Soft Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, and a long thing at that, but now its a thing, irina is a lovable obnoxious maggot, ish, its a whole thing, its for a mission alright, look alright, they're both so gay, things got like. derailed somewhere alright, this wasn't gonna be a thing, villanelle doesn't like kids, villanelle listens to lana del rey, villanelle refuses to refer to children as actual people, you know how it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 21:02:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20160040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novoaa1/pseuds/novoaa1
Summary: Villanelle has never been soft—not now, not with Anna, not as a little girl growing up on the streets of Russia. She was so terrified, back then—so alone and frightened andsmall… and yet, not in the sense that she was afraid of how the future might harm her, or that sometimes people around her went away and never came back, or the way those older men would watch her on the streets like they were imagining what she looked like naked (which was incredible, of course).No, that never scared her; what scared her was the inherent fact that none of it had ever caused her trouble—what scared her was the inexplicable feeling that shewasn’t. (Scared, that is.)Or: Villanelle is not soft. She refuses to be. Then, Eve comes along. And, still, Villanelle refuses to be soft. (Or, she tries, at least... not that it goes all that well, of course.)





	what to do when the girl you like stabs you with your own penknife

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chlolivi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chlolivi/gifts).

> look.... like it says in the tags... this totally wasn't gonna be a thing alright
> 
> i got this one request and i'd never written eve x villanelle so i was all 'sure!' and it was supposed to be super simple and then i started writing and i didn't really stoP writing 
> 
> not to mentION the request was 'smut/fluff' and uh then well.... 
> 
> here we are
> 
> (god i'm trash at this sdlfsk) 
> 
> hope u like?

Villanelle has never been soft—not now, not with Anna, not as a little girl growing up on the streets of Russia. She was so terrified, back then—so alone and frightened and _small_… and yet, not in the sense that she was afraid of how the future might harm her, or that sometimes people around her went away and never came back, or the way those older men would watch her on the streets like they were imagining what she looked like naked (which was incredible, of course). 

No, that never scared her; what scared her was the inherent fact that none of it had ever caused her trouble—what scared her was the inexplicable feeling that she _wasn’t_. (Scared, that is.)

It didn’t scare her when she saw her mother’s boyfriend Anatoly beating her mom until she cried (though by the looks of abject horror she received from the other kids in her class when she offhandedly mentioned it out on the recess fields one afternoon, she probably should’ve been); it didn’t scare her when she watched someone burning themselves with the fiery-lit butt of a cigarette on television and shrieking loudly because it hurt (in fact, she tried it herself the very next day with one of Anatoly’s joints left unattended and laughed hysterically to herself even as the searing pain of it made her eyes water); and, perhaps most concerning of all (well, at least, it was to the people who later heard about it), she found the whole thing rather funny when an older man who reeked of stale cigarettes and sour beer bribed her off the smoggy streets with a crooked yellow-toothed grin and the promise of a soya stick (she doesn’t even _like_ soya sticks—she never has) if she took his hand and walked a couple blocks down to the neighboring apartment duplex, where he stored his candy.

She remembers thinking he smelled somewhat rank, and she positively abhorred the roughness of his large hand dwarfing hers—but, still, there was a certain excitement building in her chest that she couldn’t quite ignore, an exhilarating apprehension at the prospect of what this man’s features would look like contorted in overwhelming agony. 

She didn’t care that his apartment was dark and unkempt and shabby, or that the stench of vodka so heavily permeated the air around them that it was almost nauseating to inhale, or that the solid _click!_ she'd heard after he shut the chipped wooden door was undoubtedly the succinct sound of a lock sliding into place, effectively trapping her in the close proximity of his living quarters with… him. 

He touched her then, she remembers, but she didn’t care—she didn’t care when he unbuttoned her blouse and told her she was beautiful; she didn’t care when he slid the elastic waistband of her shorts down to her ankles and murmured unintelligible exclamations under his breath in heavily accented Russian. 

Really, the only thing she cared about was finding something sharp, along with making the curious observation that something (though she wasn’t quite sure _what_, exactly) was making the man’s stained khaki trousers tight as his breaths grew labored and unsteady with every inch of pale white skin she revealed to him. 

Well, she found out later what it was, when he was bare-ass naked beneath her, his substantial whiskered body hair tickling at her naked thighs, pants and belt pooled unceremoniously around his ankles, Oksana’s tiny milky-pale hands now stained a fascinating red where they remained curled around the butter knife she’d lodged in the man’s large gut.

It was strange, for her—because, after she’d stabbed him three consecutive times, and left the cheap steel utensil protruding from his chest in such a way that her mother would most certainly have found rather unsightly, and his large sausage-like fingers weren’t scrabbling for purchase upon her bare shoulders anymore, she didn’t know where to look: the hypnotizing rivulets of crimson blood surging steadily from the wound, or the wholeheartedly enthralling expression on his face with every pulse of his slowing heartbeat as he laid there thoroughly incapacitated upon the grubby tile.

Truly, it’s the first thing she can ever remember being distinctly _upset_ about—because, sure, she was angry that her mother was such a whore, and angry that all the other kids at her school seemed to feel things when she couldn’t… but, this? This was different. 

This birthed a new meaning of the word ‘angry' in her mind, in her _body_, in her consummate consciousness upon the Earth… Because finally, _finally_ she’d found something that made her chest feel light with reckless abandon and her heart beat a little bit faster as if maybe this was something she could grow to _love_ in a way she never had her mother or Anatoly or anyone else she’d ever known. (Besides herself, of course.)

And, even better, it wasn’t perfect—it almost never was. 

She didn’t know it then, but she’d have countless experiences just like that one in the future, where she would stand callously above a gasping corpse, torn between observing the trance-inducing progression of scarlet blood pooling beneath them or watching that flicker of life (their very _soul_) shrinking and shrinking and _shrinking_ so much further into delectably fear-dilated pupils until she knows it’s gone and buried itself deeper into their lifeless bones than any of them will ever know. 

Some odd years earlier, she remembers traveling to a small, shitty town named Brookfield, Wisconsin upon receiving a kill order from Kozlov (a twenty-something young man—her handler at the time—with an annoying gap-toothed grin and an even more annoying tendency to reference American films, particularly those containing limp-dicked mob bosses and yawn-worthy gunfire-shootout sequences) on a 17-year-old New-Jersey-born girl currently under Witness Protection by order of the United States government. 

She’d prepared as per usual—listened to American radio, perfected her (already flawless) American accent, read up on every idiotic slang word and speech pattern characteristic of the Midwest that differed (in some cases) drastically from the quote-unquote ‘norm’ in America. (Truly, who would call a drinking fountain a ‘bubbler’? Do they not realize how painfully imbecilic that sounds? Is there anyone in the entire bloody region that can tell her what godforsaken ‘bubbles’ they are referring to? And, additionally, why is everyone in America obsessed with installing these ‘bubblers’ anywhere and _everywhere_ they’re able to do so?)

And, because her target was a 17-year-old girl, she tailored the typical routine in order to fit that particular antecedent—listened to the ‘pop’ and the ‘hip-hop’ on popular American radio stations with a primarily-teenaged audience, downloaded a ‘Snapchat’ and a ‘Twitter’ on her phone (both of which she deleted the second she’d slit the girl’s carotid in one neat stroke, because, _Gross_) in an attempt to understand what in the absolute _fuck_ those were supposed to be, and even going so far as to order herself a God-awful outfit that consisted of: workout tights (or ‘leggings,’ she supposed she should call them), a strappy (and notably revealing) tank top the website had called a ‘yoga pullover,’ and, last of all, fluffy tan ‘Uggs' on either foot, which may actually have been the ugliest goddamned things she’s ever worn in her life. 

(And, when she put all of it on? Together? At the same time?

Well. She’s never been suicidal, but that certainly did the trick.)

But, anyways—she’ll admit that listening to the American music was interesting, even if nearly all of it was about this illusion of ‘love’ that everyone on the planet chases after like idiots as if it’ll make even the slightest hint of a goddamned difference in the end. 

She heard the chronically sad woman with pouty lips and Daddy issues quite often—Lana del Rey, Villanelle thinks she was called—and heard the lyrics “Come on, you know you like little girls” (_Hm. You know who else likes little girls? Pedophiles_), and “He makes me shine like diamonds” (_Okay, so that's… fun_) and “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola” (_which, what does that even mean?_ ).

(She’ll admit, though—she thought then and still thinks now that this ‘Lana del Rey’ sings quite impressively, and, to a certain degree, Villanelle most certainly understands the appeal… well, not exactly, but she _sort_ of understands the appeal, and she thinks that that’s probably as close as she’s ever going to get.)

But, at the very same time, she couldn’t deny that something that utterly confounding woman sang made her stop for a moment, made her pause and think about love and beauty and _life_ like some idiot teenager who thought that the world (and, by extension, their mediocre existence) was a hell of a lot more poetic than anyone would ever have them believing. 

After all of it, she’s not quite sure she knows what the song in question was really about, not to mention she still finds the whole thing laughably stupid, but she remembers the lines “They say that the world was built for two / Only worth living if somebody is loving you” like it was yesterday, because God_dammit_, but this overdramatic wannabe Daddy’s girl wasn’t just spouting depressive horniness like a broken record anymore, because instead, she was saying something that actually kind of made sense and somewhat _mattered_… or, at least, it certainly _felt_ as if it mattered to Villanelle during the moments in which she’d first listened. 

(And really, there weren’t many things that ‘mattered’ to Villanelle—really, there never had been.) 

Because, she couldn’t help but think that, they _do_ say that, don’t they? Everything anyone tells you about life doesn’t seem to be complete unless you love someone and they love you, because without that, you’re merely existing, and existing doesn’t ever equate to living—at least, not to the majority of the seven billion people on the planet.

But, that’s just the thing, because Villanelle doesn’t think she was made for that, for kisses and slow dancing in the moonlight and making the hollow promise that ‘’til death do we part'—she didn’t think she was then, and she most certainly doesn’t think so now. 

But, she’s living, still. She’s living every day—spurred on by bloody knives and bloodier corpses, the tragic final words of one who’s bleeding out heavily and _knows_ they’re going to die alone (it’s like music to Villanelle’s ears), and a sordid passion for wine-red gore and a degree of violence many would call ‘excessive’—amidst all of that, she’s irrefutable proof that it never has to be love that completes you, not if you’re already more or less complete from the very start. 

It’s a Wednesday when that changes—and, as it turns out, that day contains a plethora of startling ‘first times’ for her, because she locks eyes with that curly-haired (gorgeous) East Asian MI5 operative in the sterile (not to mention, painfully unflattering) light of that dingy hospital bathroom, the warm blood of that tweaked-out squealer (Kasia, Villanelle thinks she’s called?) only just beginning to dry beneath her impeccably-manicured fingernails as she casually gets to washing her hands, heart thumping erratically in her chest (it’s never done that before) under the woman’s bewildered brown-eyed gaze. 

She doesn’t do anything stupid, of course—she merely finishes up at the sink, snatches a paper towel or two to dry off her pink-tinged hands, and makes a rather nonchalant remark that the beautiful woman (who’d previously been hectically fiddling with her glorious lion’s mane of hair, nervous energy rolling off of her in waves) should wear those mesmerizing curled locks down (rather than yanking them gracelessly into a restricting hairband) whilst she makes her exit from the dreary bathroom. 

She doesn’t do anything stupid, but that moment is one she knows beyond of a shadow of a doubt she’ll not be able to shake for a very substantial time… perhaps ever. 

And, that… That is a first. 

The next ‘first' comes along with the ice-cold feeling of… dread (?) that seeps through her veins as she makes her swift escape—and, to be very clear, Villanelle does not do ‘dread’ or ‘fear’… at least, not since that unspeakably momentous day (it feels like eons ago) upon which she'd killed a man for the very first time and she knew with a dizzying sense of certainty that she’d never be the same again. 

And, she wasn’t. _Isn’t_. 

So, why does this feel like one of those life-altering encounters, like she can practically feel each and every strand of DNA inside her very being rewriting itself in an entirely nonsensical fashion as she walks away, as she feels the weight of the increasing distance between herself and this nameless woman like a bone-crushing vice tightening mercilessly around her consciousness, around her _heart_?

(And, second of all, she has a _heart_ now?

When did _that_ happen?)

It can’t be love—of that, she’s certain. 

But it’s powerful just the same, and terrifying, and all-encompassing in a way that leaves her undeniably off-balance and desperately reeling—whatever it is, whatever it’s supposed to mean, she already knows she doesn’t like it. 

And, normally, when she doesn’t like something, she equips a fairly standard one-size-fits-all solution: burn it, or stab him, or kill her—nothing is permanent, everything is fragile, and Villanelle thinks that that is one of the more beautiful things about this life. 

But, this? She’s not sure that’s how this works; she’s not sure this is killable. 

And, that? That makes her resent it more intently than ever before—which, coincidentally, is something of a ‘first’ for her, too: hatred.

She’s not certain what this is yet, and she knows that that means she has to learn… even if it is, quite possibly, the worst and most pernicious obstacle she’s ever faced. 

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Fast forward a month or two, and they’ve met—more than once, actually, since that rather drab day at the hospital in London. Her name is Eve Polastri, and Villanelle eventually decides that she's going to pay her a home visit… so, she does. 

And, when she flies up her stairs and into the upstairs bathroom away from Villanelle amidst an impressive flurry of (entirely unnecessary) terror, and Villanelle hits the door solidly with a closed fist demanding entrance (along with the emphatic promise that she’s _not_, in fact, here to hurt Eve in any way, much less kill her), Eve breathlessly screams “NO!” in reply, and Villanelle wonders idly if this is what it feels like to care for someone. 

It only intensifies when she’s kicked in the door and marched purposefully in only to be greeted with the baffling sight of a scared-shitless Eve Polastri brandishing a dirty old toilet brush at her in the darkened space as if that would protect her in any way had Villanelle truly been there on mission to kill her—because, she’s sure she’s never seen something so bloody _precious_ in her life (this, coming from a woman who kills puppies for fun), and she can’t help wanting to take the woman in her arms and kiss her senseless for being so naïve, for wearing that form-fitting cocktail dress Villanelle knew would look incredible on her (and, it does, obviously), for making Villanelle’s chest feel so strange and fluttery and _warm_ until she thinks she can’t bear to handle it all on her own even as she forces herself to fight and waterboard and incapacitate Eve in some (admittedly overkill) effort to make her understand that she’s not going to die tonight. 

And, strangely enough, she doesn’t wonder about what a dying Eve Polastri looks like whilst they’re eating (well, _Villanelle_ is eating—Eve is just… staring); really, if she’s being perfectly honest, she finds that the mere thought of her witnessing Eve Polastri’s death (much less being the _cause_ for it) almost… _repulsive_ to ruminate upon. 

It’s in that moment that Villanelle realizes one thing: that she doesn’t want Eve Polastri to die. 

Not today, not tomorrow. (Maybe not ever—even if that’s an intensely foolish sentiment for her to harbor.)

And, no, it’s not love. It _can’t_ be love. 

But, either way, it’s something… something that Villanelle is rapidly running out of reasons to bother resisting for even a single second longer. 

It’s a jarring realization—and, just like that, she’s terrified again. 

Honestly, she’s not sure she’d ever stopped being terrified—not since that fateful Wednesday evening, not since she lost something irreplaceable between routine homicide and those wide brown eyes that seemed to make the world stand still… not since _Eve_.

She wants to get it back. No, she _needs_ to get it back. 

She doesn’t want to see what she becomes without it. 

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Konstantin thunks her upside the head with a log and takes off in a speedboat (rather than just dying like he should have—stubborn arsehole), leaving Villanelle with a bleeding forehead (not to mention a probable concussion) and what is, quite possibly, the most annoying undersized human she’s ever met in her entire life. 

They argue for what feels like hours, even after Villanelle’s whipped out her gun to brandish in the child’s face in the hopes that it might shut her up—the prospect of dying always did funny things to people, especially children. 

But, alas, she guesses that the world just feels like torturing her on that particular day, because her skull is throbbing, Anna’s flat is at least an hour’s trip away, and the child (Irina, she thinks her name is supposed to be) won’t shut the bloody _hell_ up. 

The insufferable maggot is midway through yet another dynamic rant in Russian, riddled with dumb questions and dumber insults, when, finally, Villanelle has had enough. 

“SHUT. _UP!_ ” she explodes, whirling around mid-stride and whipping out her gun along the way to fix the floppy-haired runt with a biting glower, cursing internally when the imminent threat of a gun waving in the child’s round freckled face does absolutely nothing to dispel her obnoxious indignation. “OR I’LL _BLOW_ YOUR TINY HEAD TO PIECES!”

“MY DAD IS GOING TO _KILL_ YOU IN THE FACE!” the loud-mouthed midget screams back without missing a single beat, and Villanelle thinks that if she just gave up and killed Konstantin’s detestable offspring now, she’d be doing him (and the rest of the world) a bloody favor—really, that’s the only reason she decides to let her live, because she does not do _favors_. Not for Konstantin, not for Russia, and most certainly not for Eve Polastri.

(Well, that’s what she tells herself, anyhow.)

“No, I’m going to kill your _dad_ in the face,” Villanelle retorts with a sneer, still aiming the handgun steadily at the child’s forehead (even if it’s proven rather useless as a scare tactic thus far).

“NO!” the child yells petulantly, and Villanelle fights the urge to roll her eyes. “WHY?”

At that, she doesn’t hesitate to reply flatly: “Because he is an arsehole.”

The oversized toddler narrows her gaze, probably in what’s meant to be an intimidating glower—Villanelle just thinks she looks constipated. “YOU CAN’T SAY SHIT ABOUT DAD—"

“I CAN!” 

“YOU CAN’T!”

“_WHY_ ARE YOU SHOUTING?!” Villanelle shrieks, bouncing agitatedly on her heels, her head beginning to throb more intently than ever before. 

“I WILL KILL YOU—"

“I WILL KILL _YOU!_ ”

“UGH!” the child groans loudly, though she doesn’t falter. (Villanelle thinks she might just be gaining the tiniest smidgen of respect for the little pint-sized freak.) “YOU ARE GOING TO DIE—“

“AGH!” Villanelle screeches, throwing her head back before bellowing at the child, gun still pointed unfailingly at her tiny chubby-cheeked face: “_WHAT_ WILL YOU MAKE YOU STOP _SHOUTING?!_ "

“FOOD!” it seethes back, and Villanelle blinks at the admission, momentarily thrown. 

“WHAT?” she gasps, breathing heavily in the wake of their somewhat impromptu shouting match, and the child heaves a heavy sigh, as if Villanelle’s the dumbest person in the universe for asking such a question. 

“I’m _hungry_,” the tiny weirdo quips decisively, giving her an expectant stare. 

Villanelle lets out a sharp exhale, finally regaining some of her earlier composure as her fingers reflexively tighten their hold around the gun. “… Oh,” she breathes out. “Okay,” she acquiesces in a mocking tone, then turns (instinctively stashing her gun in her coat) as the telltale _beep! beep!_ of a car horn from down the road catches her attention, and she sighs, relieved. 

“Stick out your thumb,” she orders authoritatively, manhandling the child with a rough grip until they're standing beside the road. She does. “Look vulnerable,” Villanelle adds as something of an afterthought, watching the approaching vehicle with a careful eye. 

The devil’s spawn heaves another dramatic sigh, and Villanelle already knows a snarky wisecrack is coming—so, she’s not all that surprised (or surprised at _all_, really) when it grumbles back, “I _am_ vulnerable.”

Villanelle ignores her, giving the middle-aged brunette man in the nearing pale-blue-painted car a pleasant smile. 

Kids are a goddamned nuisance. 

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She lets the kid go eventually, because, despite what she’ll let literally everyone else believe, she’s not a monster—or, well, yes, she is, but she’s not a monster who kills children. Or rapes them. Or bothers at all with them, really. 

Point is, she has morals, okay? You can still be a psychopath with morals, and Villanelle is living proof of that. She always has been. 

So, she lets the unbearable leech go (though not before burying a bullet or two in Konstantin just because she can), grabs her passport and cash, and promptly flees the scene, even if everything within her positively lurches at the loss, at leaving Eve Polastri behind with those big brown doe eyes and that dazzlingly elegant face; she leaves without sparing a parting glance, because she’s strong, and she always has been. 

It still hurts more poignantly than anything she’s ever felt before—but, she does it, and that’s what matters. 

But, she arrives at her Paris flat to shattered (bloody _expensive_) champagne bottles and sweet-smelling booze seeping into the floorboards and a deer-in-the-headlights Eve Polastri pointing a gun (one of Villanelle’s, interestingly enough) in her direction with trembling hands, and she can’t help the way her heart flutters at the knowledge that Eve is _here_, in her apartment, giving Villanelle every ounce of her diligent attentions. 

(And, as for the gun, well… nothing’s perfect, she supposes.)

She knows that Eve won’t shoot her—and, she doesn’t. Instead, they sit across from one another in the disaster zone of a bedroom: Villanelle at the vanity, Eve sinking inelegantly atop the primly-made bed. 

“I think about you all the time,” Eve admits in that low no-nonsense tone of hers, dropping the gun unceremoniously beside her upon the bedspread, and Villanelle thinks she’s never heard (nor seen) something so effortlessly _beautiful_. 

Eve is good with words, Villanelle finds—a bit of a poet, to some degree. 

Villanelle is not, and when it comes her turn to speak, she wants to slap herself when she hears herself blurt out, “I think about you, too. I mean, I masturbate about you a lot,” like an absolute _moron_.

And, really, the taken aback look upon Eve’s glorious features only confirms it. 

Still, Villanelle does her damnedest to keep her cool (what little of it remains), affording her a shrug and the barest hint of a smirk. 

“Too much?” she prods teasingly, though there’s a realness underlying her tone that she can’t quite do away with entirely, and she curses herself for being so uncharacteristically _vulnerable_… even if Eve likely doesn’t notice it.

“No,” Eve replies with little hesitation, and Villanelle’s heart jumps. “I just… I wasn’t expecting that.”

_She’s full of surprises_, Villanelle thinks idly, and that realization stirs something curious in her gut… something that scares her like little else ever has. 

“God, I’m tired,” Eve sighs out eventually, flopping herself back to sink into the comforter, the gun (and Villanelle, seemingly) more or less forgotten for the moment—Villanelle can’t help but follow her lead, something inside her rejoicing at the simple feeling of lying side by side atop the bed, neither of them speaking, like a ‘time-out’ (of sorts) where Villanelle didn’t kill Eve’s friend Bill and Eve doesn’t care that Villanelle’s a killer and nothing has to happen now that they’ve come to this, here, other than an utterly inane sort of simplicity in the eye of a disastrous hurricane. 

“Would you stay for a bit?” Villanelle asks quietly once the two of them have turned on their sides to face one another upon the bed, their eye contact something electric, the scant space between them seeming to buzz with an air of intoxicating possibility. (Though, to be fair, that could be just the obscene amount of booze permeating the air, instilling them both with some degree of contact drunkenness as a result—who can tell, really?)

“Sure,” Eve acquiesces, long eyelashes fluttering hypnotically as she blinks, and Villanelle wonders if this is what it’s like to be altogether _taken_ with someone. 

(Which, of course, is absurd—but, right now, being absurd doesn’t feel quite so dangerous anymore. 

Right now, it feels like anything’s possible, even as she knows that that sounds like a crock of idealistic bullshit. Which it is, obviously. 

But, that doesn’t change the fact that things feel different, now, with Eve so close and the world so far and the rest of it all fading to white noise in the background whilst the enthralling chocolate-y brown of Eve’s irises only seems to intensify with every passing moment.

God, what is _happening_ to her?)

And, then, well… Then, things take a bit of a turn. 

She’s not sure that ‘turn’ is the correct term, really—what _does_ one classify it as when the ex-MI5 agent who’s been chasing you for the murders of various high-profile targets across Eurasia stabs you in the gut with your own penknife rather than kissing you senseless like you’d been expecting?

Well. She’s most certainly about to find out, now, isn’t she?

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It’s almost funny, the irony—because, really, she’s never been stabbed before, which, considering what she does for a living, is something that’s always been something of a source of pride within her. 

She’s never been shot, either—again, an anomaly in and of itself, and a testament of just how efficient she’s always been in everything she does.

And yet now, after she’s jobless (i.e. not bound to a mission in which bodily harm would be considered a semi-serious concern) and laid up languidly across from a woman she thinks she just might care for in some wholly inexplicable capacity, a woman who’s choosing not to arrest her for her crimes after years of serving and upholding the law with an almost nauseatingly powerful moral compass—now, she feels the lancing white-hot _pain_ of a knife separating her flesh, of her own warm sticky blood pooling around its mark, of overwhelming adrenaline jump-starting all systems in her body even as she feels her energy draining with each gush of bleeding crimson, every moment she remains with a stab wound marring her gut. 

Her pale-rose-gold sweater is soaked through with her own blood and Eve is screaming bloody murder from above her as if _she’s_ the one that’s been stabbed (not even to _mention_ the painfully idiotic decision to promptly rip out the knife only seconds after burying it beneath Villanelle’s ribcage that only served to make the whole thing that much worse)—but, there’s something absurdly otherworldly about it all just the same. 

Maybe it’s the pain, or the adrenaline, or maybe this is just what dying feels like—but, either way, Villanelle is heaving frantically on her back, warm wet blood pooling into the lush bedspread beneath her, a shock-addled Eve straddling her hips and pressing shaking scarlet-soaked palms against the agonizing wound and screaming interminably all about how she’s not a _fucking_ doctor (as if Villanelle really gives a shit about that right now). 

A couple minutes later, and she’s grown nearly certain that the blade missed her internal organs entirely by some divine stroke of luck (even if Villanelle doesn’t and never has believed in such things), which means (if she’s lucky), she’s not going to die today. 

Eve is still shrieking nonsense above her but the blood flow is slowing, and her head feels unendingly dizzy but she feels the pain of the injury like a vice crushing her lungs, and the fact that she’s feeling it so powerfully is more than enough to tell her she’s a long way from the eternal sleep she’s spent a lifetime avoiding by way of hard drugs and bottomless liquor and a millennium’s worth of blood (innocent and otherwise) tainting her violence-worn hands. 

Death’s never scared her, per se, but she’ll admit that it did just now, with her vision blurring and Eve’s cacophony of distraught noise fading steadily from above her and the uniquely devastating realization dawning upon her pain-addled brain that after everything—the fighting, the killing, the lies and ill-timed jokes—this could be it. 

No more guns, no more fancy silken dresses, no more targets… no more _Eve_. 

It’s strange, this feeling; it’s strange, because she’s never known something (or some_one_) to be her reason for living, her reason for staying and trying and _being_ whilst the ever-tantalizing enigma of death seemed to pull endlessly at her from the shadows. 

Sure, she enjoyed killing—maybe even _loved_ it, at some point or another. 

But, it’s not like this. It can’t hold a fucking _candle_ to this flame, to the warmth Eve effortlessly sets ablaze within her chest with even the most fleeting of glances… even when she has a hundred bloody reasons (along with a _very_ painful though admittedly somewhat warranted stab wound in her gut) screaming that she’s a damned fool for allowing it—for allowing _her_—to entrance Villanelle at every turn as she does. 

Villanelle has never been soft—and, still, she’s not quite sure she ever will be. 

But, this, right here, even if Eve won’t stop bloody screaming and Villanelle thinks that her stomach is quite literally trying to tear itself apart from the inside, well… she can’t help but feel a little simpler. More malleable. Formless, but in the best possible way, even when she’s prided herself for so long on remaining something of a constant throughout it all. 

But maybe, just maybe, change is okay sometimes—especially (or _only_, really) if that change comes in the form of one Eve Polastri. 

⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖ ⌖

**Author's Note:**

> the working title waS 'what to do when the girl you like stabs you with your own penknife: brief memoirs from professional serial killer and probable psychopath oksana astankova' but uh..... a lil too long obviously
> 
> so anyways um. thoughts? feedback? all that? let me know
> 
> oh alsO (my [tumblr](https://psyches.co.vu/))


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